Thaw

Item – I have reached the unfortunate phase in which the nice, comfortable numbing ice of shock and startlement starts to melt, and I keep accidentally putting my boot through a rotten patch and having to limp about for hours with the Sodden Sock of Uncomfortable Thoughts. So, yeah, welcome to the weepy, irrationally angry, panicking part of the show.

Item – Physical recovery notes: I can walk for fifteen minutes before my leg starts aching. I can even run little errands. However, I still can’t walk very fast, and if I over-do it I feel like Woman Who Has Been Fell-Walking For Seven Hours, rather than Woman Who Went Round The Supermarket Looking For Lemons, Cream, And Gluten-Free Pasta. I had a slight cold, and then another slight cold (or one long cold that paused for a wee rest in the middle), and had quite a few episodes of breathlessness, lightheadedness and once, a near-faint that cheered H up no end. My left leg is not particularly swollen any more, but is covered in visible veins now, so my legs don’t match anymore. Which I don’t really care for. I am also very prone to bad, day-long headaches, three or four days a week. My recovery has slowed right down to a very sluggish crawl. I don’t know if I’m well enough to go back to work next week. H definitely thinks I’m not, which makes me feel weepy and panicky in itself.

Item – Then H was in the wars. He had a nasty abscess, which needed lancing and draining at the A&E (well, it might not have, but the GP panicked), so we had another long dull afternoon waiting about at that Goddamn hospital, and then the young doctor who assessed H insisted in putting a drip cannula into the back of his hand in case he needed surgery on the horrible oozy mess. H hates needles. He really hates needles. He had to leave the room every time I was approached by a nurse bearing tourniquets while I was in hospital. It was in a mahoosive display of loyal solidarity that he used to sit with me for at least a few goes during the IVF shoot ’em up. And there he was, needled, and covered in adhesive tape. When the more senior doctor finally did fight his way free of the operating theatre and come lance this stupid abscess, he did it all with lidocaine jabs. And then took the useless cannula out, ripping nearly all H’s hand-hair out in the process, which I am told hurt more than the needle. Anyway! H has to see a nurse every morning to get the dressing and packing changed (ugh) but it’s healing very cleanly and he has finished his antibiotics now and I swear, he may NOT have any more ailments this year, because between us it is the outer freezing darkness of enough already on matters medical.

Item – So far I am happy with the Cerazette. No bleeding, and, best of all, no endless fucking cramps and bowel spasms. So far fingers crossed touch wood kiss iron spit on the coals etc.

Item – My bloody mad family struck again, in the form of a surprise relation who finally, well into adulthood, tracked us down and said ‘Hi! I’m so-and-so’s child! Yes, while he was married to thingy, the bigamous old goat. How many other kids did you say he had?’ In the event, Surprise Relation was absolutely lovely, but I skipped several family meet-ups despite emotional blackmail because heyo! Not well! Really not well! So there was that.

Item – Yes yes yes I am working on the WTF appointment blog post. I really am. I said I would. It’s very difficult to write, is all. 6AA, the perfect embryo we did so much to keep safe inside me, died anyway. I nearly died. Something is very wrong and everyone talks phlegmatically of trying again with the frozen embryo as soon as my haematologist clears me for pregnancy. I think everyone is stark staring mad with unwarranted optimism.

Ack – Poor H! Well, I guess he knows what a waxing feels like now. I hope he has no further trouble with anything medical for a looooong time.

Glad to hear that you are seeing some slight improvement, but if 15 minutes of walking wears you out, you’re probably not ready for work yet. You’ll be done in by the time the commute is over. Take another week or two, if you can.

I’ve never had a surprise relation. That must be…awkward and interesting.

Hope you find dry socks of acceptance and tempered unhappiness soon. Barefoot in fields of happy wildflowers is way too much to ask at this point.

The bit of the recovery where you have enough energy to think you can do things is really effing frustrating. At least in the initial stages you are feeling terrible enough ( whether through pain, grief or general depression) not to want to do anything, but when you start to feel better, try to do something and then need a lie down, just sucks. Lots of sympathy and hugs.
And not sure whether those three grocery ingredients were related, but pasta in a warmed cream sauce ( just cream and a little bit of lemon zest) is yummy. Sometime I add bits of smoked salmon as well.
Best of luck, hoping that things improve nd that the doctors manage to find an explanation for what happened, along with a workable solution.

I’ll say it here: please don’t die. (and H: please don’t explode). It is easy for anyone to say “just try again, but this time without the almost dying”. But we/they don’t have to feel your fears. Even if there was such a thing as absolute certainty that you wouldn’t die, you would still have to live through it. Wet socks or no.

And um, didn’t you say your commute was 1 hour? what if you can’t get a seat? Recently I tried going to work with a minor infection. I cycled half hour, which was fine, but only just. Then I sat at my desk all day unable to do anything because I’d ran out of energy. Now I have a job where people won’t bother me and leave me sit. But your job may not be as quiet as mine.

And I should add more lemon zest to my life.
(and I add mushrooms and pancetta to the creamy pasta sauce)

Either you & H need to find a Ring or the Eye of Soren needs to be poked out as it has been pointed many times too many in your direction.

In my very very non-medically certified opinion it does sound like you are still not up for return to work. Between the sudden and understandably upsetting Sodden Socks of Uncomfortable Thoughts, and leg and headaches it just seems like a Bad Idea however enticing it may be to think of dealing with things which are not encompassed in the above items. Are there any work related items you could handle at home without the effort of lugging yourself there and back?

Hopes for sunny & dry meadows for you! And non-fattening sweets (which may be as mythical as rainbow farting unicorns, but still…).

May must not die and H must not explode and no more bad things must happen to May and H! Seriously though, I’m glad you’re back on the blog, however much or little and I’m glad you’re on the mend, though it sounds like it’s going painfully slowly. I wish you nothing but peace and healing and I certainly hope you are being taken seriously and that some major figuring out WTF happened and why is going on. *hugs*

It’s lovely to hear from you and I’m with the others on further delaying your return to work. I was off for a month once after an operation and was told by work that they wanted me to take longer, than come back too soon and have to go off again. Maybe try one day a week and ratchet it up from there?

Hugs to H – hope that he too is on the mend.

Looking forward to reading more of your thoughts when your ready (including last night’s GBBO elimination if the WTF appt is too difficult to write about). Take good care May.

You two have just redefined ‘medically complex’ AND ‘shitty luck’. Which by themselves are bad enough, but when brought together, there is a synergy between them, and what should have been a simple addition of unfavourable … let’s call them socks, leads to an exponential explosion of medically shitty luck. Which in short will be known from now on as ‘May and H’.
Get well soon, both of you! Stay at home and just get well, and sod everything else, most crap will still be around when you are better and more able to face it. I also suggest you try chocolate margarita pasta, it sounds intriguing.

Give yourself plenty of time to heal. I had my big bad rt subclavian deep vein thrombosis that went from my heart to my rt elbow in 1996 and even on blood thinners it took a full 8 months to completely dissolve. It took another 2 years to grow collateral circulation around the blood vessels that were damaged and my rt arm is still not as strong as my left. I am no longer on blood thinners except for aspirin, but I was for about 10 years and continued to get clots for 6 of those 10.
Be easy on yourself and give yourself a break. I use to go to work evey day and come home and collapse into bed until it was time to get up a s go back to work. My arm would ache so much from the impaired circulation that I would have to keep it elevated to help the blood drain back out of it because it would flow down to the end of my arm but could not get back up to my heart. So by the end of the day it was swollen and very very painful. This is a miserable feeling that is very difficult to relieve. Please do not do this to yourself.